


Lost My Home To Thieves

by uminoko



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 14:17:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1269532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uminoko/pseuds/uminoko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some musings on the odd friendship between a little Russian girl and a Department Xer.  Retcons:  learn them, live them, love them, 'coz they ain't going away (until they are).  This fic is a gift for Hollysocks.  I stole the title and the lyrics from Liz Phair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost My Home To Thieves

She settles against the big, hairy man who smells like cigars and dark earth and looks up into the endless sky. The world is big, she realizes, much bigger than she dreamed of, much bigger than the four walls of her home, where she goes through the drills and math and languages. The girl can feel her mind stretch, and it's good to feel like she's smart, but also, something else is happening. Her body is still made up of knots and muscles wired together, but it's shifting, too, taking on a new kind of grace.

She doesn't have the words for it, and there are no women around to dispense advice. She only knows that she's on the brink of something, something larger than she's ever known. And it's not that the innocence is lost, because there is already blood on her hands. It's that never again in her life will she have something like this, simply laying there on the summer ground. She'll never stare into the birch-lined sky, learning how to fend for herself from someone else. Soon, the little baby wolf will find out that she is alone, and has always been alone, and always will be, with plenty of candidates interested in rending her throat with their tooth and claw. Or worse, they'll cage her, like a pitbull in the basement, and she'll learn to lock her door at night, and practice all her moves, and keep her mouth shut tight, and make herself their friend.

She has no idea, of course. Right now, she has a man as strange and wild as herself by her side. Her uncle is a mystery: a big softie and a killer, she can smell death on him with some kind of a sixth sense that they both share. Mindlessly, she takes delight in biting him and watching him heal, but she also sees shadows rise around him, and bends her whole little heart upon scaring them away with her fire. The world is fresh and bright, and sharp enough to cut through to their hearts.

All of this will be forgotten, trampled: they will stick her brain with their metal and syringes, and rip out all the earth, and the grass, and the birch trees. They will take the sky above her head and the water from her eyes.

But the fire they can't take; so, they will burn.

They will all burn.


End file.
